If the RiffTrax DVD Player doesn't work for you... read this.

[AmandaGal]

Did you say it played DVDs in other programs?  If it does, the following advice is probably moronic.

Have you installed the DVD drive drivers?  If you just took the harddrive out and slipped it back in, chances are the HP harddrive was not configured properly for your machine.  It sounds to me like that's what you did, since it still thinks it's an HP.  If you go to control panel and look at device manager, do you see a ! next to the DVD drive?

Dell should have the drivers or Samsung or one of the million driver download sites on the tubes if you haven't.  Windows plug and play could have possibly picked it up as a drive but not as a DVD player.  If it were me, I'd probably reinstall them even if you have done it before, but it's hard to diagnose without seeing your machine.

[kodiakthejuggler]

well, I tried the codec fix.....didnt work. Tried several DVD's. My system is rather old and is a frankencomputer or at least has several personality disorders.
here goes nothing

It's a Dell dimension 4100 997Mhz Pentium III
256Mb of ram
here's the weird part, it thinks it's a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion
because my hard drive failed and I took the hard drive out of my fiance's computer. I assure you it is a dell though, I think
Running Windows XP pro
service pack 2
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX w/TV out
Creative SB Live
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616

let me know if you need more info

"Rather old" is an understatement, dude. I'm surprised this thing still works!   

[Quicksilver]

well, I tried the codec fix.....didnt work. Tried several DVD's. My system is rather old and is a frankencomputer or at least has several personality disorders.
here goes nothing

It's a Dell dimension 4100 997Mhz Pentium III
256Mb of ram
here's the weird part, it thinks it's a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion
because my hard drive failed and I took the hard drive out of my fiance's computer. I assure you it is a dell though, I think
Running Windows XP pro
service pack 2
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX w/TV out
Creative SB Live
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616

let me know if you need more info

"Rather old" is an understatement, dude. I'm surprised this thing still works!   

hey! it's vintage.
all the drives work and when I insert a DVD I am prompted as to how I would like to play it.

I probably would have given up on this machine if not for some upgrades, like wireless everything, 21" widescreen and it has great speakers.

[Quicksilver]

oh and I do have the ability to run a DVD on one program run a rifftrax on another synched up. So really using this program should be an easy task. The rifftrax player loads right up but tells me to insert a DVD.

[AmandaGal]

Then I'm out of suggestions except there are some great deals on PCs right now, lol.  Maybe bsandrew will have some insight.

That being said, I installed it on an old Packard Bell POS with specs worse than yours during the beta and it worked (the poor PC cranked like heck though and it paused a lot) so it can be done.

[MrHappyPants]

I'm having the same problem that quicksilver is, albeit on a much newer computer. I have a retail version of PowerDVD Max 7 installed which plays DVDs just fine, as does windows media player, windows media center, creative mediasource, and the roxio player. But the Rifftrax player doesn't recognize that there is a DVD in the drive.

What I tried so far. I clicked on DVD Settings and selected use custom filters, and set both to the Cyberlink decoders, and I also tried the 10-odd other ones in the pull-down menus. nothing worked, still says no dvd in the drive when i click on load rifftrax

The only thing i can think of is that the rifftrax player supports only IDE DVD drives, and not SATA ones, or that it doesn't work with Vista. I'm at kind of a loss here, I've tried 2 DVDs so far. I'd rather not go the codec pack route, if at all possible, as every experience I've had with codec packs has resulted in problems so nightmarish and hard to fix that a complete re-install of windows was the only way to get everything working again, plus with the full version of PowerDVD installed, codecs shouldn't be the issue.

My specs:
Epox AF590 SLI2 (Nvidia 590 SLI chipset)
AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+
4GB Gskill DDR2 800
EVGA Geforce 8800GTX
Soundblaster X-fi
ASUS  DRW-1814BLT SATA DVD Drive
Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Any ideas?

[AmandaGal]

It does work with Vista but if you ever have any doubts, you can always change the compatibility mode to XP.  I don't think it would help in this case, but if you have other programs you don't know about in the future, it might.

I don't have any advice other than the fact that I have it running on Vista just fine, as did a few of the other beta testers. I did have to install a codec or two and for some reason the player didn't update until I told it to so I was using a really wonky version.  Weirdly enough, it updates just fine on it's own now.
I know Vista has some graphic and video issues but I don't think it effects the rifftrax player at all, at least not in my case.

[mocciolo]

After working at this off and on for almost a month I finally got it working with my laptop. Running a DVD movies and avi files on my HP dv8000 laptop was never a problem until now.  Here's how I fixed my problem...

Problem:  After running the Riffplayer and loading the riff file, the computer would not open the dvd drive and it would just sit there.

Step 1:  Uninsulated and reinstalled Riffplayer - Result: No change
Step 2:  I loaded the K-lite codex as advised.  -  Result: Error message stating that the Riffplayer could not find the files that tells it where the DVD drive is located.
Step 3:  Installed a new AC3 - Result No change.
Step 4:  Installed my AVS DVD player software
Step 5: Uninsulated all codex (K-lite, AC3), AVS DVD player and Riffplayer, then reinstalled the K-lite and Riffplayer ONLY- Result: Worked perfectly!

Now I can view my riff movies on my laptop.  - Thanks!

[bsandrew]

After working at this off and on for almost a month I finally got it working with my laptop. Running a DVD movies and avi files on my HP dv8000 laptop was never a problem until now.  Here's how I fixed my problem...

Problem:  After running the Riffplayer and loading the riff file, the computer would not open the dvd drive and it would just sit there.

Step 1:  Uninsulated and reinstalled Riffplayer - Result: No change
Step 2:  I loaded the K-lite codex as advised.  -  Result: Error message stating that the Riffplayer could not find the files that tells it where the DVD drive is located.
Step 3:  Installed a new AC3 - Result No change.
Step 4:  Installed my AVS DVD player software
Step 5: Uninsulated all codex (K-lite, AC3), AVS DVD player and Riffplayer, then reinstalled the K-lite and Riffplayer ONLY- Result: Worked perfectly!

Now I can view my riff movies on my laptop.  - Thanks!

No.... Thank YOU!

.

[carruth81]

OK here's my problem: Everytime I try to load a .riff file and play the movie (it'll start automatically) the box pops up that says Rifftrax.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. As I am posting this I havent tryed changing the codecs and I will, but it sounds to me like it might be the .riff file more then the DVD. I have Win XP Pro, Intell Centrino Duo Lenovo Thinkpad R Series with about 71000 MB total and just over 16000 MB free. Iff thats any help or if anyone else is haveing this problem let me know. I will try changing the codecs and if it works I'll post.

[stollensecret]

i had to use the dvd player... i would have never figured it out without your help. thanks!

[SlickRick]

My rifftrax player is doing the same thing as previously said (DVD parts of the tool bar are grayed etc.)  Is there a way in the player to tell it what DVD drive to use?  Because I run Dameon tools as well and I Think its trying to use one of those drives to play the DVD from. 

[SlickRick]

Alrighty I'm officially out of ideas.  I tried what mocciolo suggested and that didn't work.  Any other suggestions? 

[darkside]

I've given up.  I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling as suggested above but the player refuses to find the DVD.  My system is not that old.

For a future update it would be nice if we could tell the player where to look for DVDs since it seems unable to find them on its own for many of us.

[Bairman]

Updated the first post to include info regarding the Flash player ActiveX control for Internet Explorer.